


Regeneration

by sanctuary_for_all



Series: The Other Half of Me [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Feels, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Healing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-23 02:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2530946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanctuary_for_all/pseuds/sanctuary_for_all
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of all the changes between them, FitzSimmons learn how to be FitzSimmons again. </p>
<p>(AKA all the FitzSimmons scenes that should be in this season but aren't, from 2X06 on)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They talked less, but they touched more.

Sometimes, Jemma wondered if one was in compensation for the other, but she'd never been in a romantic relationship so she couldn't really say for certain. Her parents were never overtly physically affectionate with one another, no matter how close and happy their marriage was, and there really wasn't anyone at the base who she felt would be an expert on the subject.

So she didn't ask, instead running her fingers through Fitz's hair as she set the damaged hard drive down in front of him. "I was wondering if you could help me with this."

He leaned into her touch, just a little, as he picked up the hard drive to examine it more closely. "Is this the hard drive you stole from HYDRA?"

The corners of his mouth curved upward just a little as he glanced up at her, a silent joke she wasn't entirely sure she understood. But he was smiling again, and that brought her more than enough pleasure all on its own. "Agent Morse stole it, technically. I'm afraid being targeted for execution left me a bit too flustered to think of it."

She'd meant it as a joke – apparently, the constant threat of death left one with a terrible case of gallows humor – but Fitz's expression immediately grew serious. As she cursed herself for being an idiot, he caught her hand and pressed a kiss against the inside of her wrist. "Don't do that again," he murmured, squeezing it gently before letting it go. "Nearly die, I mean."

Her expression softened, something inside her easing at the way he'd reached out for her. Neither of them seemed to be very good with words, these days, but their touches no longer had any hesitation or doubt in them. "I don't plan to." It was another conversation they should probably have, one of many, but neither of them were ready yet. Instead, she cleared her throat, one hand smoothing over Fitz's shoulders. "So, do you think we can save the drive?" He looked up at her again, a little curious, and she realized that she had forgotten to explain that part. "It was damaged during the escape, and unless we can fix it there's no way to recover the intel I'd collected."

"Ah." His expression cleared as he bent back down to the hard drive. "Shouldn't be an ... a problem." He set it down, carefully prying apart the case. "First we probably need to look at the ... um ...."

"Shock sensor?" The words slipped out of her mouth without any conscious decision on her part, an old reflex from the days when she could finish his sentences without even needing a pause.

"No." He shook his head, still searching for the right word. "The...." He tapped at a corner of the circuit board. "The micro...."

Jemma swallowed back another suggestion, chest aching at the space she could no longer fill. Her hand tightened on his shoulder, and though he winced as he glanced up at her he didn't flinch away. "Sorry," he murmured. "Words still aren't ... there for me, yet." He smiled a little. "But I know what I'm not talking about, I promise."

"I know." She tried to smile back at him, but she could see from the sudden worry in his eyes that it was sad around the edges. "I just wish I could be more of a help." She pressed a kiss against the top of his head, needing the contact. "I used to always know what you were going to say."

The worry eased out of his expression. "If I don't know what I'm going to say, how can you?" He leaned in closer, resting his head against her side for just a moment. "And you do help, just by being here. By knowing you didn't...."

"....want to leave you?" she finished softly, the words slipping out again. Even if they were wrong, he'd forgive her for it.

He straightened, looking up at her with a brilliant smile. "See, you do know sometimes."

Her own lips curved upward, feeling lighter. "That was an easy one."


	2. Chapter 2

"I still can't find anything on the weapons." Jemma sighed as she looked up from the HYDRA files, glancing over at Fitz. "Are you having any better luck?"  He was sitting next to her, looking through backlogged files on his tablet. Technically, she'd kicked him off his computer, and Jemma was sure she'd feel more guilty about that if he hadn't plugged the hard drive in himself and stolen her a chair.

The computer terminals in the new lab were too far apart, anyway. She'd have to see if she could get Fitz to help her fix that.

He hesitated, gesturing towards the blueprint on the screen in front of him. "There's something about this design. I just can't...." He gestured to a spot near the wings. "It's important, and I know I know what it is, but ...."

She leaned over to get a closer look at it. "Old HYDRA designs," she murmured, then looked up at him. "You'll find it."

He made a frustrated sound. "I just wish I could find it _now_."

Feeling eyes on them both, she glanced over at the man watching them from the other side of the lab. She'd been introduced to Mack a few days before, and though he'd been perfectly polite it had been impossible not to notice the mild disapproval radiating off him. It wasn't quite the same now, but she could sense the same feeling from him that her father used to project when she would bring a date home. Hurt her, it seemed to say, and you won't touch her again.

It was ... good, honestly, that he was so protective of Fitz, but a part of her just wanted to shout at him that protecting Fitz was _her_ job. She'd left him, the hardest thing she'd ever done, solely to protect his recovery. Mack had no right to see her as the interloper.

"Jemma." It was only when she felt Fitz's hand along her shoulders that she realized she'd been glaring at the other man. She turned back, feeling ridiculous, but he simply raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Sorry." She winced a little. "That was inappropriate."

He smiled a little. "I was, too. With Tripp."

Her brow furrowed, confused. "What?"

"That's why I was so rude. I was...."

He stopped, hunting for the word, but Jemma already knew what it was. She'd just been feeling it, after all. "Jealous? You were jealous?"

"Because he's ...." Fitz waved a hand in the direction of an imaginary Tripp. "And I'm not."

She blinked, still not able to shake her surprise. Even before she'd known how Fitz felt, the thought of becoming romantically involved with Tripp had genuinely never occurred to her in any serious fashion. "He's a perfectly nice man, but I'd be bored within a week."

Fitz's expression grew serious. "You might get bored with me, you know. If I never ... if the words don't come back."

Jemma tried to imagine a world where she would get bored of Leopold Fitz, but she couldn't even picture the general shape of it. "Never," she said finally, shaking her head. "That just means I have to learn you all over again."

His whole face softened as he smiled, warm and bright, and she couldn't stop herself from leaning over for a quick kiss. When they broke apart, he leaned in for another one. "No one will ever take your spot, Jemma," he murmured. "But I should probably have him look at the blueprint."

She squared her shoulders, forcibly reminding herself to be mature as she stood. "Of course. I'll make us some tea."

"No, I'll make it. Last thing I would have wanted to do was leave you alone with Tripp." He pushed her gently back down into the chair, then stood and held up the tablet. "Mack! Come see if you can figure out what I'm missing."

Mack came over, a curious expression on his face as he took the tablet from Fitz, then watched him head to the kitchen. He looked down at the blueprint, examining it for a moment, then glanced over at Jemma. "You seem to be taking this well."

She tried to look as dignified as she could. "I'm an adult. I'm perfectly capable of sharing."

He chuckled. "Not that. I meant the word thing." He paused. "I know half of what he says is nonsense, and not everyone can—"

"No it's not." The words came out angrier than she'd intended, but Mack just gave her a questioning look. She made herself take a deep breath. "It's not nonsense. It's just that he no longer has access to enough vocabulary to sufficiently explain everything that goes on in his head, so the bits that do come out sometimes seem jumbled." She looked down at her hands, then back up at Mack. "But if we could see everything he sees, it would all make perfect sense."

After a moment, he nodded. "You really are hung up on the guy."

She smiled. "Yes, I am."

Mack smiled back. "Good." He turned toward the doorway. "He's lit up since you came back, like someone turned a lightbulb on in his head. Didn't want him crashing again."

Before she could respond to that, Fitz came through the door with two cups of tea. He handed one to Jemma, then froze."Bombs." He looked at her, then over at Mack. "The bombs. On the thing. They're the ..." He snapped his fingers. "Who designed them?"

Mack checked the file. "A scientist who worked for Red Skull during World War II. Guy named Vincent Beckers."

Jemma's eyes widened only a moment ahead of Fitz's. He turned to her. "Isn't that...."

"Yes." She set down her cup, already stepping away from the terminal. "We need to find Coulson."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an alternate/missing scene for 2X07, aka the episode where Coulson went into the memory machine. I know I'm a week behind, but I had to go find my will to live. Sorry.

Fitz stood next to Mack while Coulson was in the machine, ready to ... well, he didn't know, actually. If Coulson got violent, Mack or even Skye would be more of a help. Jemma had to be there to assess his vitals, which meant that ... he supposed if the machine broke down, or started a feedback loop, he would be the one who would know how to fix it. He might have to tell Mack, because although his hand was stronger it wasn't quite up to what it was, but there was that.

And the entire tangled nonsense of it was far better than thinking about Coulson in a machine he and Jemma still didn't trust. He trusted that Coulson could get his memories back – better than Mack, it seemed – but he still didn't quite trust that machine. He knew how fragile brains could be, now.

Skye read her questions, prompting Coulson through his buried memories of the Tahiti project. Fitz watched Jemma's face as he spoke, cataloguing the different emotions he could see chasing through her features as each new detail was revealed. He knew it would have been tough for her to let go of the project, too, in that other doctor's place, and the guilt she was feeling right now over that very fact.

He wished he was standing closer to her. He should have arranged for that.

Then Coulson started convulsing, and every other thought was chased out of his mind. Fitz raced to shut off the machine as Mack held Coulson down and Jemma went to get the sedative, which left Fitz on the opposite side of the machine when a wild flail from Coulson sent her back against the wall. The kick of something in Fitz's own chest was impractical but instinctive, and before he could find the word to describe it Skye was pointing a gun at Coulson and he was calm again.

As she took him downstairs to the holding cell, Fitz hurried around the machine to Jemma.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She straightened, brave face firmly in place, and moved past him to start cleaning up. “It was barely a push, really.”

Fitz just watched her for a moment, deliberately setting aside the brief jolt of hurt and uselessness in his chest. He’d gotten caught up in a cycle of both while Jemma was gone, and even now it was occasionally an easy thing to slip back into if he let himself. He was getting better, but he still wasn’t back up to full speed. Still wasn’t quite the man who had been at Jemma’s side for so long.

But he knew Jemma. He knew her better than anyone here, and quite possibly better than anyone in the world. She’d never really needed someone to swoop in and protect her, no matter how much he’d wanted to be that for her at times.

Sometimes, though, she needed someone who knew her.

He looked over at Mack, nudging his head towards the exit in a silent request for a few minutes alone with Jemma. The other man still looked unsettled, but he nodded and left the room moments later.

After he was gone, Fitz started helping Jemma. Technically, she’d finished cleaning a long time ago, and by this point was going through and adjusting things by a few millimeters. He did the same, careful not to move anything she’d already done.

When they’d run out, Jemma tried a smile. “It barely hurt, Fitz. Really.”

“Oh, I know that. Tough secret agent that you are.” Then he let his voice soften. “Bit that came before that wasn’t so easy, though.”

She blinked hard at that, looking away for a moment. By the time she turned back to him, her eyes were wet. “Tell me I wouldn’t have made a very good member of HYDRA,” she whispered.

Fitz’s chest ached, remembering the conversation they’d had by that hotel pool when the team had been on the run. He hadn’t really been thinking when he’d asked her to reassure him that she wasn’t HYDRA, wanting only reassurance that he wouldn’t lose the bedrock of his life to the chaos that was destroying everything else.

But she’d been alone for so long. And science … well, science was always beautiful. Even when people did horrible things with it.

“You’d have made a terrible member of HYDRA,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms. She went easily, wrapping her own arms around him as he held her close. “Insist on putting pictures of daisies and kittens into the brainwashing or some other such nonsense like that, just to make them all more cheerful.”

Her sudden laugh was suspiciously damp. “Actually, there’s nothing that says the basic techniques of brainwashing couldn’t be used to positive effect. You wouldn’t get the same kind of control, since cheerful associations would build up the person’s sense of self and community, but it would have a marked effect on attitude.”

He smiled against her hair. “See? Absolute nonsense.”

She let out a shaky breath, then gave him a fierce squeeze before pulling away. Her expression had eased, without the brittleness it got when she was trying to be strong, and her lips actually curved up a little as she leaned forward to give him a soft, slow kiss. “My hero,” she murmured.

Only she could make him feel like one. “Any time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come check out my weekly posts and original short fiction on my [blog](http://jennifferwardell.blogspot.com) or say hi to me on [Tumblr](http://sanctuaryforalluniverses.tumblr.com)!


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